Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/278

264 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 54. effect. Seven hundred men were sent to Carlisle, to Scrope, and a thousand to Sir John Foster on the Middle Marches ; the remainder were kept at Berwick with Sussex himself and Hunsdon. The line was to be crossed the same day and hour at three different points. Sussex was to march direct to Kelso and follow the line of the Teviot upwards. Foster was to enter half way be- tween Carlisle and Berwick, and Scrope was left to his discretion, to go where he could inflict greatest injury. On the evening of Monday, the lyth of 'April, the two noblemen left Berwick. They halted at Wark till day- break the following morning, when they burned Kelso, and then passed up Teviotdale in two bodies on either side of the river, ' leaving neither castle, tower, nor town undestroyed till they came to Jedburgh.' Every stone building, large or small, was blown up with powder and left a pile of ruin, while Leonard Dacres and Lord Hume hovered about at a safe distance, but did not dare to approach. At Jedburgh they were joined by Foster, whose track from the Cheviots had been marked by the same broad belt of desolation. The next day the whole body moved up the glen to Fernihurst. They found it deserted, the laird and his gay lady, the refugees, and the thousand Border thieves who had nestled in its out- houses, being all flown or hiding among the cliffs which overhang the banks of the Jedd. With powder and pickaxe they '* rent and tore ' the solid masonry, till not a man could find shelter from the rain among the ruins ; and thence, still sparing nothing but the earth cabins of the poor, they advanced to Ha wick. At Hawick the